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If you really want to get the most bang for your buck from Copenhagen planks try performing them with half your foot or forefoot off the bench as I have MLB pro baseball player Austin meadows doing here. I call this the Copenhagen plank 2.0. With that said here’s why the Copenhagen plank 2.0 is superior to the traditional Copenhagen plank and why I’ve actually used it to replace a majority of the Copenhagen planks my clients and athletes perform.

The primary goal when using the Copenhagen plank is to target the adductors. However to fully engage the adductors and inner thighs requires 2 primary functions to be completed, one obviously being the execution of an adduction force (squeezing the legs together), the other less commonly known being internal rotation of the hip accompanied by foot adduction. In fact, to fully engage the adductors requires the hip and foot to be slightly internally rotated or pointed inward (i.e. pigeon toed) as this allows a slight but natural degree of internal tibial torsion that’s necessary for fully activating the inner thigh musculature. In fact when performing adduction motions particularly when the foot and ankle complex move near the midline of the body, prohibiting the hip and foot from slightly internally rotating represents a dysfunctional position as inward rotation of the hip and foot should almost always accompany complete hip adduction.

When the entire medial portion of the foot is anchored into the bench this prohibits the athlete from completing the last several inches of internal rotation of the hip and adduction of their foot. As a result they’re unable to fulfill the various functional tasks associated with the musculature of the hip adductors. Once the forefoot or top half of the foot is free to adduct and rotate inwardly several inches, this not only maximally engages the hip adductors but it also feels exceptionally more natural and comfortable as the hip is no longer being torqued or pulled on but instead can settle into its most biomechanically natural position.

In fact, one of the most common complaints about Copenhagen planks is how they hurt the knees especially the inner region. The Copenhagen plank 2.0 addresses this and fully remedies it.

As an added bonus, the level of instability is exponentially more challenging during the Copenhagen plank 2.0 since the lifter inevitably has less surface area on the bench therefore less total support. Simply put, the level of motor control, balance, and stability needed to lock these in is exceptionally high making them a truly effective and functional core stabilization exercise.

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To perform the windmill side plank assume a side plank position on the hand instead of the forearm. This increases the instability and difficulty of the movement and makes it more challenging. Stack both feet on top of each other while maintaining a dorsiflexed ankle position in both feet. Keep the opposite arm pointed straight up throughout. Focus on opening the chest and rotating the elevated arm up and back while maintaining a straight line throughout your entire torso.

While upper body instability and poor shoulder alignment are oftentimes common issues many athletes experience during windmill planks, lack of lower body stability and lumbopelvic hip control is even more prevalent. While a number of cues including those described in the following sections are critical for addressing this, there are several specific advanced progressions of the windmill plank that will both expose and address these issues.

This includes placing the support leg on an unstable surface such as a foam roller, resistance band (chaos band method), TRX, or BOSU ball as my client Leslie Petch and I demonstrate in this video. These require near precision levels of body control, core activation, postural mechanics, hip alignment, foot positioning, and lumbopelvic hip control. Just be prepared to focus your mind and body like a master Jedi as the level of concentration and near-perfect body mechanics required is incredibly high.

KEY BENEFITS OF THE WINDMILL PLANK

The ability to transmit force and coordinate neuromuscular recruitment between the hips, core, and upper torso is vital for athletic performance as well as heavy strength training. The side windmill plank is one of the few exercises that requires the hips (especially the smaller glute muscles), upper torso, core, and feet to work together synergistically in one controlled high-tension isometric.

Essentially what you’re doing during the windmill plank is you’re resisting lateral flexion of the spine and lateral hip collapse as gravity is attempting to drive your hips towards the floor. To fight these forces you’ll be required to fire the glute medius (outer hips), internal obliques, external obliques, and quadratus lumborum muscles of your core. If that still doesn’t make any sense, just think of this as the ultimate exercise for crushing the sides of your hips and stomach/love handles.

In fact the windmill plank targets the same muscle groups you’ll commonly see individuals in the gym attempting to stimulate with side bends and core rotational exercises only this time the exercise actually works. In addition to improving functional movement patterns, posture, and spinal positioning, you’ll be strengthening numerous stabilizers from head to toe rather than just isolating one small muscle group.

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OPTION #1

This next exercise is a single leg stand on a BOSU ball. This is a great drill for waking up the muscle spindles and stabilizers of the ankles, feet, and toes - a common area of weakness in most athletes.

OPTION #2

This next exercise is a Single Leg RDL Double Barbell Jump. These clean up misalignment & asymmetries as even the slightest deviation causes the barbells to tilt & twist resulting in loss of balance.

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NOTE: Use empty bar with 5-20 lbs more on one side.

This next exercise is an offset loading barbell squat jump. Offset loading jumps are some of the most challenging and deceptively brutal explosive movements you can implement into your routine. It’s one thing to perform an offset movement with slow or traditional rep tempos as the nervous system can gradually adapt to the exercise. However adding an explosive jump takes the stimulus multiple steps further as the lifter not only has to calibrate to the offset loads while producing force but they also have to adjust while in the air and during landing. As a result the impact this has on deceleration, force impact, and force absorption is difficult to replicate with any other training modality.

Additionally these are incredibly challenging while airborne as the offset weight will want to twist, and tilt the body while in the air. For athletes this has tremendous carryover to the playing field as they’ll often face incoming forces and impact while their in the air not just when their on the ground. Learning to control your center of mass while in the air and not allowing an external object to pull you out of alignment can be the difference gaining the edge over your opponent or letting them push you around. Offset jumps directly address these attributes head on. It’s also worth noting that the opposite leg from the loaded side will have a tendency to shoot up during these unless you brace the daylights out of your body. In fact you can see this occur to Marcelis during the second half of his set particularly on the first rep. However, once he dialed in his nervous system and eliminated the energy leaks he was able to control his body and the movement as you can see towards the end of the set.

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Sometimes it’s fun to do the impossible. This mantra is particularly true of physical accomplishments that either require tremendous strength, stability, motor control, balance, focus, or all the above. If you’re looking for the ultimate core challenge that also happens to tax the daylights out of your shoulder stabilizers and lumbopelvic hip complex, this bird dog renegade row with one foot on a foam roller is brutally diffiuclt. Just make sure you’ve mastered the basic renegade row using my Complete Renegade Row Guide before attempting these.

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MAIN OPTION

Want to learn how to stay incredibly tight on the bench press & eliminate any trace of energy leaks & weak links? Try the offset leverage barbell bench press. I know what you’re thinking, this looks like easy right? Nope! This is without a doubt one of the most intense full body pressing movements you’ll ever perform as every muscle from head to toe will be firing to keep you from falling off the bench not to mention trying to keep your body & barbell centered. Additionally the level of motor control, core stabilization, & grip strength needed are inordinately high.

Furthermore, level of anti-rotation & rotary stability is off the charts. Think of this as a combination barbell bench press & Pallof press. Whether you’re a high level athlete looking to improve your functional ability to handle unique forces you might experience in your sport or you’re simply looking to improve full body strength you owe it to yourself to at least give this an attempt. This is also a phenomenal exercise for bulletproofing your low back as your spinal stabilizers must work overtime to keep your hips, torso, & spine aligned. With that said offset loading provides 12 unique benefits. Learn more about them at the following: https://www.advancedhumanperformance.com/blog/offset-loading-strength-training

EASIER OPTION

This alternate exercise is a double offset chest press using a 35 lb kettlebell and a 85 lb dumbbell. Although this looks a bit odd it actually provides several unique features that make it incredibly effective for building functional strength and size as well as improving motor control, body mechanics, and shoulder stability.

First, one of the drawbacks many lifters complain about in regards to bottoms up presses is that they tend to be too light to produce an adequate strength and hypertrophy stimulus. Even if you are fairly efficient at bottoms up movements you’ll most likely only be taking advantage of only 2 mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy namely mechanical tension and metabolic stress. Simply put you’ll be missing out on the third and arguable one of the most important mechanisms namely muscle damage and micro-trauma as the loads are typically too light to trigger this. However this dilemma is quickly resolved with the double offset method as the lifter can reap the benefits associated with bottoms up movements while simultaneously triggering a significant hypertrophy stimulus with traditional heavy dumbbell loading.

The other key benefit of this method lies in enhanced motor control and neuromuscular efficiency. While one arm is essentially performing a relatively standard overload movement in the form of a heavy dumbbell press, the other arm is performing a lighter yet highly unstable bottoms-up press. The goal is to transfer the same crisp and proper mechanics produced from the bottoms-up kettlebell technique to the arm that’s simultaneously pressing the heavier dumbbell on the opposite side. Once mastered, the movement should appear seamless and synchronized as if you were using the same tools and loads on each side with no visible differences in body position and mechanics. This requires an incredibly high degree of neuromuscular coordination, body awareness, proprioception, sensory integrated movement, and mental engagement.

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The L sit lat pulldown is a great way to ensure the spine particularly the lumbar spine stays in neutral as it's nearly impossible to over arch and over extend the low back. When performed in a single arm fashion this increases core activation further as you're resisting rotation and lateral flexion. Eduardo is slightly over pulling here so focus on pulling just to roughly 90 degrees rather than below. This is typically around mid face height.

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This next exercise is an overhead pizza plate z press with an eccentric isometric protocol. Most lifters lack the ability to properly centrate and pack their glenohumeral joint during high force activities. This deficiency is even more pronounced during overhead movements. The pizza plate press will give you immediate feedback as to whether or not your shoulder mechanics and overhead pressing technique are dialed in. This is even further magnified when using the Z press protocol due to the more biomechanically challenging position that requires greater levels of motor control, stability, mobility, and technique.

If you fail to properly depress and retract your shoulders particularly during the eccentric phase of the exercise you’ll likely dump the weight plate. Simply, hold an old-school iron weight plate flat in your hand and perform a press while slightly tucking your elbow to the front of your body. Even if you’re able to avoid dumping the load, record yourself and observe the weight plate. If the plate stays completely parallel to the floor while keeping your elbows semi-tucked then you know that your shoulder function and overhead pressing mechanics are most likely spot on. If the plate fails to stay parallel to the floor then you’ll want to address your specific areas of weakness and dysfunction.

Although the effects are similar to a bottoms up kettlebell press, the pronated grip used here has even better transfer to barbell exercises as well as sports that involve pushing maneuvers (i.e. football lineman). Finally, if you don't have a partner you'll want to perform these in a single arm fashion which places greater strain on the core and spinal stabilizers due to the unilateral offset load.

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The anti-rolling foam roller lunge uses the foam foller in a longitudinal position. As such, instead of the lifter resisting forward and backward rolling forces, the individual will be resisting medial and lateral deviations as demonstrated by my awesome client and national figure competitor Leslie Petch. This variation provides many of the same benefits of the first variation above. However it also holds three unique attributes that make it highly effective for cleaning up other lunging mistakes.

1. This lunge variation forces the lifter to maintain perfect balance on the front leg. If the front ankle, knee, or hip begins to deviate even slightly this creates a ripple effect throughout the kinetic chain ultimately causing the back foot to roll off the foam roller.

2. With this particular anti-lateral rolling foam roller lunge the lifter will be required to assume an in-line or semi in-line stride position (both feet semi in-line with each other). This is something I’ve discussed for quite some time now as most lifters take a straddled or staggered position with too much space between the left and right foot. Having a large gap (left to right) between the front and back leg, not only ingrains faulty lunge mechanics but it negatively trickles into running and gait mechanics eventually causing faulty stride technique. I’ve seen this lead to hip, groin, low back, and knee issues one too many times. Fixing this mistake and teaching the lifter to use an in-line or semi in-line stride position does wonders for cleaning up the lunge and ultimately greatly improving running and movement mechanics. For those of you who are still on the fence about this issue, just try this lunge variation on the foam roller as it both teaches and demonstrates the importance of using an in-line stride position as anything less will result in loss of balance. In fact I’ve played around with numerous advanced lunge variations over the years that require very precise balance and motor control. Each time, in order to lock the movement in, particularly in conjunction with eccentric isometric holds (which further uncovers and magnifies optimal mechanics), an in-line stride position is always required. This variation is no exception as performing a straddled or staggered position (which is the incorrect method that most lifters resort to) creates wasted energy leaks in lateral and diagonal directions rather than producing perfectly horizontal and vertical forces. With the in-line or semi in-line stride position there is no energy wasted not to mention no unusual forces or torque acting on the joints, muscles, or connective tissue as all the force is being channeled perfectly into the targeted muscles.

3. This foam roller lunge variation also fixes another common flaw, which is back knee and back foot drift. Simply put, many lifters have trouble keeping the back knee and back foot in-line with each other (and in-line with the body) as they typically will rotate slightly out or slightly in. With this variation, any rotation of the back foot, hip or knee will result in that foot immediately rolling off the side of the foam roller. This also does wonders for cleaning up foot, toe, and ankle issues commonly seen during lunges as it forces the lifter to optimize their mechanics in the lower extremity.

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Zercher good mornings/RDL's are an effective hip hinge exercise for taxing the posterior chain. Unfortunately heavy loads can feel quite uncomfortable on the low back and arms. Performing them in a single leg fashion as demonstrated by my awesome client Leslie Petch absolutely blasts the glutes and hamstring while also sparing the spine and arms.

These also tend to be quite brutal on the core and abdominals not to mention the stabilizers of the feet and ankles. I recommend performing these in an eccentric isometric fashion not only to maximize tension to the posterior chain but also to enhance proprioception and sensory feedback.

If your glutes still aren’t feeling decimated by the time you’re done with your set, try performing a biomechanical drop. Simply go immediately into traditional bilateral (double leg) Zercher good mornings once you finish the single leg reps for each leg. Super setting these with you favorite glute bridge and hip thruster can also add additional overload and tension to the glutes and hamstrings.